The Witches of Oz (Blu-ray)

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All Rise...

Judge Clark Douglas usually tries to finish his reviews before he releases them.

The Charge

The magical world of Oz and all of its inhabitants are real and they are
coming to New York City!

The Case

To be honest, The Witches of Oz almost doesn't merit a proper review,
because it isn't really a proper feature. I'm not saying that as an insult to
the talents of the people involved. It's just that The Witches of Oz is
essentially a rough first cut of an unfinished movie, and it's a little
difficult to properly assess a film which is only half-finished.

Let me explain. The Witches of Oz was directed and co-written by a
gentleman named Leigh Scott, who has developed a reputation as the creator of
infamously shoddy low-budget productions. Among his credits are such estimable
titles as Transmorphers, Dracula's
Curse, Pirates of Treasure Island and, um, a particularly ill-advised
dramatization of The 9/11 Commission Report. However, Scott insists that
The Witches of Oz was a genuine passion project from all involved, an
earnest attempt to create something people would actually enjoy and admire. It's
evident that a good deal of love was put into the project, despite the fact that
the end result is pretty crummy even by impossibly low SyFy Channel
standards.

At the moment, The Witches of Oz has been transformed into a superior
"director's cut" of the movie entitled Dorothy and the Witches of
Oz. In the new version, over an hour has been lopped off of the ridiculous
164-minute running time, almost all of the special effects have been redone, new
footage was included and the sound mix was improved. However, we'll have to wait
a while to see all of those improvements, because this initial Blu-ray
presentation offers the super-long, super-sloppy television version of the film
that originally aired on SyFy.

The plot is astonishingly convoluted (the film spends an hour and a half
simply unraveling the details of its preposterously overcooked premise), but the
basic idea is pretty simple: Dorothy Gale (Paulie Rojas, The Last Resort) is the author of numerous
beloved children's books about the wonderful world of Oz. Ah, but it turns out
that her stories are actually based on repressed memories, and that she actually
experienced all of those fantastical adventures as a child. Now, due to a series
of troubling circumstances, the most evil citizens of Oz are about to invade our
world. Can Dorothy save humanity from the attacks of the Wicked Witch (Eliza
Swenson, Chrome Angels) and her cohorts?

It's a pretty run-of-the-mill concept that could easily be told in modestly
entertaining fashion in ninety minutes, but Scott and co. have saddled The
Witches of Oz with oodles of needless backstory, Lord of the
Rings-inspired mythology, a host of dull time-filling conversations and
awkward moments of comic relief that are likely to inspire weary sighs. There's
nothing here that suggests a great movie is hiding inside this mess, but it
might have at least been watchable if it weren't so sloppy on a technical
level.

The special effects are beyond horrendous. The average viewer could create
more compelling effects on their home PC without much effort. The sound mix is
weak, as the overbearing original score (written by actress Eliza Swenson) often
drowns out the dialogue and there's very little sense of immersive atmosphere.
The film was shot in 2.39:1, but has been ruthlessly cropped to 1.78:1 for this
television presentation (and it shows, in scene after scene after scene). The
performances are weak across the board, even from seasoned pros like Sean Astin
(Rudy), Billy Boyd (The Lord of the Rings: The
Fellowship of the Ring), Lance Henrikson (Millennium), and Christopher Lloyd (Back to the Future). Seriously, how
many horrifically bad projects have Lloyd and Henrikson been a part of over the
course of the past decade?

The Witches of Oz (Blu-ray) looks okay, I suppose, though the
aforementioned cropped transfer makes it pretty difficult to watch. Detail is
middling, as the filmmakers seem insistent on smearing everything in softness to
provide viewers with that "magical" aura (it also helps to hide the
film's technical shortcomings and cheap-looking props). Black levels are fine,
though there's some prominent crush on occasion. The DTS HD 5.1 Master Audio
track is unnecessary, as there's no reason for a lossless presentation of such a
sloppy mix. Dialogue is frequently overwhelmed by underscore, sound design is
messy, certain scenes sound as if they were recorded in a tin can—it's not
pretty. Supplements are limited to a trailer and a 3-minute behind-the-scenes
featurette.

The Witches of Oz is a disaster. Here's hoping the shorter theatrical
version at least manages to make this ill-conceived project a bit more
palatable.